London History, Up Close

In 1954, the British government appointed a committee to examine the law on homosexuality. For the sake of the ladies present at proceedings, homosexual men were referred to throughout as “Huntleys” and prostitutes as “Palmers“, after the biscuit manufacturer Huntley and Palmer. The resulting Wolfenden Report London would eventually recommend decriminalising homosexuality, but this wouldn’t occur for another decade. The chair of the committee was Sir John...

In March 1938, with war looking increasingly inevitable, a group of basement offices beneath a Whitehall building close to Parliament began their transformation into a secret underground headquarters. By August 1939, a week before Hitler invaded Poland, they were operational. For the next six years, the Cabinet War Rooms were where Britain’s war was run – by candlelight, under concrete, with chemical toilets and no flushing, mice in the walls, and staff who stripped to their...

Above the entrance to Quo Vadis – one of Soho’s smarter private members’ clubs, draped in Union flags – a blue plaque marks the years that Karl Marx spent in the two-room attic flat directly above where people now pay handsomely for dinner. The building has improved considerably. The Spy at the Kitchen Table One afternoon in the early 1850s, a man called Schmidt arrived at the attic flat at 28 Dean Street. He introduced himself as a journalist. The Marx family...

The Gargoyle Club Soho occupied the upper floors of 69 Dean Street from 1925 until 1952. Its interiors were designed by Henri Matisse. Its members included Virginia Woolf, Francis Bacon, Dylan Thomas, Fred Astaire and Noël Coward.  And its entrance was a rickety external elevator that once left a future leader of the Scottish National Party dangling in mid-air for half an hour. As private members’ clubs go, it had range. What David Tennant Wanted The corner of Dean Street and...

On the evening of 6 October 1769, an Italian literary critic walked briskly up the Haymarket in London, was grabbed by the private parts by a woman in a doorway, struck her, was set upon by three men, stabbed one of them fatally, and was arrested. He was tried at the Old Bailey two weeks later for murder. His character witnesses were Samuel Johnson, Joshua Reynolds, Edmund Burke, David Garrick, and Oliver Goldsmith. He was acquitted. The Man in the Dock Giuseppe Baretti was an Italian...

Someone once wrote to the police to warn them about Kate Meyrick. She was, the letter said, “the wickedest woman in London.” She had been to prison four times, was openly laughing at the law, and was paying off a sergeant by the name of Goddard at a rate of several hundred pounds a week. The letter was not wrong on any of these points. Fifty Pounds for a Partnership In 1919, Kate Meyrick was sitting at home nursing her daughter through influenza when she saw an advertisement...

In 1961, Peter Cook opened a comedy club in a former strip club in Soho, beneath a satirical magazine’s office, and next to a photography studio where one of the decade’s most notorious photographs would shortly be taken. He chose the location for its seediness. He called the club the Establishment. The irony was entirely intentional. Why Soho, Why Now The building at what is now 18 Greek Street has had a complicated life. It began as a soap warehouse, became a Chartist...

Dean Street runs through the heart of Soho, a district still full of theatres. From at least 1740 until 1748, number 78 was home to the Irish actress Margaret Woffington, known to everyone as ‘Peg’. She was, by that point, one of the most talked-about performers in London. She was also a woman who refused to marry, kept control of her own money, and lived as she chose in full public view, at a time when that required considerable nerve. As unconventional as the neighbourhood itself,...

Charing Cross Road runs south from Oxford Street through the heart of the West End. Nothing at 107–109 Charing Cross Road, now occupied by Foyles, indicates what once stood here. But in 1677, in what was then a half-built district of raw brick on the northern edge of London, a group of Greek Orthodox refugees raised a church on this spot. They had fled the expanding Ottoman Empire and had petitioned the King. What they built did not last long. But its story – one of displacement,...

In 1935, a basement on Wardour Street brought Harlem to London. The Metropolitan Police took detailed notes. Anonymous neighbours wrote letters to Scotland Yard. A sergeant questioned the musicians about their wages. But none of it worked. The Shim Sham Club was London’s first Black-led music venue, and it was going to do what it liked. London’s Miniature Harlem The dark green-fronted building at 37 Wardour Street sits in the heart of Chinatown, in the southern part of...